What is Consensus?
Consensus is a search engine for scholarly research. You ask a question, it finds relevant papers, and it writes an answer in which each sentence links to a source paper.
Who it's for
Researchers at any level, from people starting a first project to experienced publishers, according to the Consensus docs. Team and Enterprise plans cover organizations and universities.
Pros & cons
Strengths
- Consensus says paper search is unlimited on every plan, including Free
- Answers are built only from papers Consensus found, with a citation on each sentence. If nothing relevant turns up, it says so
- Consensus says retracted papers are flagged and not used in answers
- Deep review is an agent that plans sub-questions and runs up to 20 searches, typically analyzing up to 50 papers and up to 100 when a larger set helps
- It can also be reached from ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot, and through an API
Limitations
- The Free plan lists 10 Pro messages, 3 Deep reviews, 10 Study Snapshots and 30 API or MCP calls a month
- Pro allows 15 Deep reviews a month, and Pro Analysis summarizes up to 20 papers per search
- Each Deep review uses one Deep credit, and each Skill such as Literature Review or Verify Citations also uses one
- The plan with 200 Deep reviews a month is the separate Deep tier at a higher price
- Consensus's own pages disagree on some figures, such as coverage (400 million versus 220 million papers) and the Free message count (10 versus 15), so we leave coverage out
Plans and pricing
- Free: $0. Unlimited paper search. 10 Pro messages, 3 Deep reviews, 10 Study Snapshots and 30 API or MCP calls a month.
- Pro: $144 a year billed annually (about $12 a month), or $20 monthly. Unlimited Pro messages and Study Snapshots. 15 Deep reviews and 500 API or MCP calls a month.
- Deep: $540 a year billed annually (about $45 a month), or $65 monthly. Unlimited Pro messages and Study Snapshots. 200 Deep reviews and 2,000 API or MCP calls a month.
- Teams: Custom, per seat. Pro features plus 50 Deep reviews and 500 API or MCP calls per seat a month, with central billing.
- Enterprise: Custom quote. For larger organizations, with volume discounts and library integrations.
Prices and limits are from Consensus's help center and docs. We could not open its live pricing page, so confirm the figures there. A vendor file we read also mentions a student discount, which we did not verify and do not list.
Details checked October 2026 against the vendor's own pages. Prices and limits change, so confirm before you buy. Official pricing page ↗
Sources
This profile was compiled from these public pages. We have not run hands-on tests.
Consensus — at a glance
Consensus is a search engine for scholarly research. You ask a question, it finds relevant papers, and it writes an answer in which each sentence links to a source paper.
Try Consensus →